The present technique relates to an antenna apparatus that may be used as a base station in a wireless network, and to a method of configuring a transmission beam for such an antenna apparatus.
A wireless network may be provided to serve a range of different functions, but typically includes a number of base stations, with each base station communicating wirelessly with multiple wireless terminals. For instance, in the example of an access wireless network, the wireless terminals may be items of end user equipment, and each base station may communicate wirelessly with multiple such items of end user equipment. Another example of a wireless network is a wireless backhaul network (also referred to herein as a wireless feeder network), where each wireless terminal (also referred to herein as a feeder terminal) is typically coupled to an access point of an access network, and those wireless terminals then communicate wirelessly with one or more base stations, also referred to herein as feeder base stations. The feeder base stations are then used to connect the wireless backhaul network to a core network.
Within a wireless network, a base station may need to use a transmission beam that facilitates transmitting signals to a number of different wireless terminals that will typically be spread out within a geographical area serviced by the base station. The quality of the link provided between the base station and the various wireless terminals can be affected by a number of factors, such as the environment in which the wireless network is deployed (for example in a densely populated urban environment there can be many physical structures that will attenuate signals), interference from other wireless signals being transmitted within the deployment area, etc.
It would hence be desirable for a base station in a wireless network to be able to self configure its transmission beam so as to seek to reduce the potential adverse effects on link quality due to such factors.